Professor Simon During

BA (Victoria University, Wellington), MA (Auckland), PhD (Cambridge).

Simon During is a New Zealander who studied for his PhD in Victorian literature at Cambridge. For many years he taught at the University of Melbourne, where, as Robert Wallace Chair and Head of Department, he helped establish the Media and Communications, Cultural Studies and Publishing programs. Between 2002 and 2010 was a Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, where he also served as Director of the Film and Media Programme. He has held fellowships and visiting positions at Berkeley and Princeton and elsewhere. He currently holds an APF at the centre.

His books include Foucault and Literature (Routledge, 1991), Patrick White (OUP, 1994), Modern Enchantments: the cultural power of secular magic (Harvard, 2002), Exit Capitalism: Literary Culture, Theory and Post-Secular Modernity (Routledge, 2009), and Against democracy: literary experience in the era of emancipations (Fordham University Press, 2012). He is currently mainly working on a history of the relationship between Anglicanism and literature in Britain from 1600 to 1945.

"The Limits of Culture," in "Culturalisms" a special issue of New Literatures Review, 45-46 (2009): 23-40.

“Regency London,” in The New Cambridge History of English Literature: the Romantic Period, ed. James Chandler and Marilyn Butler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 335-356.

“Church, state and modernization: English Literature as Gentlemanly Knowledge after 1688,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 37/8 (2008): 167-196.

“Tricks, traps and magic,” in The Great Transformation: art and tactical magic/A grande Tansformacion: Arte e Maxia Táctica, ed. Chus Martinez (Frankfurt and Madrid: Frankfurter Kunstverein and Museo de Arte Eontemporanea de Vigo, 2008), 12-19. Published in English and German, Spanish and Galician translations.

“William Beckford in Hell: an episode in the history of secular enchantment,” Huntington Library Quarterly: a special issue on Technologies of Illusion: the art of special effects in eighteenth-century Britain, 70/2 (2007): 269-289. German translation of a version of this essay published as “Beckford und der Teufel,” in Rare Künste: zur Kultur-und mediengeschichte der Zauberkunst, ed. Brigitte Federer and Ernst Strouhal (Vienna and New York: Springer 2006), 339-365.